AUG29 Lm 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf_*.A3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



AUG 27 1898 



THE 

CONSTRUCTION OF THE BIBLE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

I 

How to Read the Bible 

Hints for Sunday-school Teachers and 
other Bible Students, 12 mo. cloth, 
50 cents. 

II 

Trie Theology of the New Testament 

16 mo. cloth, 75 cents, net. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher 
2 « 3 JBtble Ibouse, mew lorn 



THE CONSTRUCTION 
OF THE BIBLE 

By WALTER F. ADENEY, M.A., 

PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, HISTORY AND CRITICISM, 
NEW COLLEGE, LONDON ; AUTHOR OF " THE THEOLOGY OF THE 
NEW TESTAMENT," " HOW TO READ THE BIBLE," ETC. 



NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
1898 



12813 

Copyright, 1898, 
By Thomas Whittaker. 



AUb <& 7 lobb 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 



2nd COPY . 
1898. 




PREFACE 

This little book consists of two lectures which 
were given at the Chautauqua in Matlock last sum- 
mer. They are printed on the suggestion of the 
authorities of the Sunday School Union, in the hope 
that they may introduce a larger audience to the 
studies with which they are concerned. By the 
title, " The Construction of the Bible," is meant 
not so much the origin of its contents in the minds 
of the writers — a subject which opens up the great 
question of inspiration, its mode and method — as 
the putting together of the several parts of Scripture 
in one volume. This story of construction, therefore, 
is wholly literary and historical. At the same time 
it is necessary to be in some degree acquainted with 
it if we would understand the mutual relations of the 
various parts of what is seen to be a slowly unfold- 
ing and progressive Divine revelation. 

W. F. A. 

Hampstead. 



5 



CONTENTS 



i 

HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS CONSTRUCTED 



PAGE 

L The Hexateuch . 9 

1. Ballads . 13 

2. Traditions 15 

3. Laws 21 

(i.) The Ten Commandments 22 

(ii.) The Book of the Covenant . . .22 

(iii.) The Law of Holiness 22 

(iv.) Deuteronomy ....... 23 

(v.) The Priestly Code 25 

Moses, Ezekiel, and Ezra 27 

II. The Peophets 29 

1. Historical Books ....... 31 

2. Prophetic Utterances 34 

III. The " Writings " ....... 39 

1. Psalms 39 

2. Hebrew Philosophy 41 

3. "The Five Rolls » 42 

4. Daniel : ... 42 



The Apocrypha 44 



Advantages of the Study of the Old Testament 45 

7 



8 



Contents 



n. 

ROW TEE NEW TESTAMENT WAS CONSTRUCTED. 



PAGE 

I. The Epistles 48 

1. James 48 

2. The Pauline Epistles 48 

1st Group. Elementary Epistles . . . .50 
2d Group. The Four Great Epistles . . .52 
3d Group. Epistles of Captivity . . . .57 
4th Group. Pastoral Epistles 58 

3. Hebrews . .60 

4. The Remaining Epistles 61 

II. The Gospels, etc. . . ' . . . .62 

1. The Synoptics 63 

(i.) Mark . 64 

(ii.) The Logia . . 70 

(iii.) Matthew and Luke ... . 71 

2. Acts. 75 

3. John . 77 

III. The Canon of the New Testament ... 80 

1. 4 1 The Gospel" .81 

2. " The Apostle" . 84 

3. Books on the Margin 85 



The Unique Authobity of the Testament . . .85 



The Construction of the Bible 



I. HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS CONSTRUCTED 

It has often been said, and said quite truly, that 
the Bible is not simply a book, but that it is a 
library. It consists of many books of different 
kinds — histories, poems, speeches, letters — written in 
many ages that cover in all a period of about 1,000 
years. The history of the Bible, or, 6trictly speak- 
ing, the history of the Old Testament, is the history 
of ancient Hebrew literature. What is this history? 
How was the library collected ? That is the ques- 
tion before us. 

We sometimes hear complaints of " the disintegrat- 
ing process of criticism, " how it is breaking the 
Bible into fragments. These complaints come from 
taking a figure of speech too literally. In a sense 
it is true that the Bible has been taken to pieces; 
that is to say, it has been analyzed. In thought it 
has been divided up ; but only in thought. The 
binding of its essential unity holds it together still ; 



10 



The Construction of the Bible 



not a page has been lost. There has been nothing 
analogous to the scattering of the Sibylline leaves. 
It is as much a mistake to imagine that the pene- 
trating light of criticism which searches out its 
hidden structure is shattering that structure as it 
would be to imagine that the X-rays in revealing the 
bones of a man's hand must be tearing off the flesh. 

The Bible may be compared to one of our great 
English cathedrals, and the historical criticism to 
the architect who, without disturbing a single stone, 
examines the pile and discovers the various styles of 
art and the various periods of time that it repre- 
sents — seen, perhaps, in the rude Saxon foundations ; 
the massive Norman pillars and round arches of the 
nave ; the early English windows of the clerestory ; 
the decorative style of the chancel ; the perpendicu- 
lar of the great west window; the Tudor sumptuous- 
ness of the Lady Chapel. The cathedral is one, 
and the various parts blend in the rich harmony of 
"frozen music." Yet the sharply differing styles 
inform us as plainly as by a hand-writing on the 
wall concerning the different periods at which its 
several parts were built. 

Now this is just what historical criticism has been 
doing with our Bible. The great temple stands 
intact; the foundations are sure, and the walls firm. 



The Old Testament 



11 



But the periods of its construction have been made 
apparent by means of a study of the various orders 
of literary architecture it represents. To change 
the metaphor, the strata of the rock have been ex- 
amined, and the several layers and deposits of which 
it consists assigned to their respective ages. The 
geologist does not produce an earthquake when he 
reads the record of the rocks, and by examining the 
steep escarpment of the cliff detects the order of the 
successive strata. 

What is thus brought to light is nothing new in 
kind. It is simply the application and verification 
of an ancient statement of Scripture itself. I refer 
to Hebrews i. 1 : u God, having of old times spoken 
unto the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions, 
and in divers manners.'' By " divers portions" — this 
suggests that the Bible is a compilation from various 
sources ; " in divers manners " — this points to the 
different kinds of literature that are to be found in 
the Bible. What is new in the study is to be traced 
to the greater thoroughness, the more exacting ac- 
curacy, the more scientific method of the inquiry. 

We may learn to rearrange the order of the 
books ; there is no special sanctity attached to the 
places in which they now stand. In point of fact, 
the order in which the books appear in our Bibles is 



12 The Construction of the Bible 



quite different from the order in which they occurred 
in the Bible used by the Apostles, the Septuagint. 

Similarly, there is no special sanctity attached to 
the order in which the various parts of some of the 
books are arranged. As it has always been clear 
that the Bible is a collection of many books, so now 
it is made equally clear that some of the books of 
the Bible are themselves collections or compilations 
from various sources. This is evident, of course, in 
the case of the Psalter ; the book itself makes men- 
tion of several authors. The same is true of the 
Proverbs, as the reference to the collection made by 
44 the men of Hezekiah " (xxv. 1) shows. We shall 
see that it is also the case with other books. 

The present inquiry will not open the question of 
the inspiration of the Bible. I shall take the fact 
for granted, without entering on the thorny path of 
theories concerning it. The verse quoted from the 
Epistle to the Hebrews is our safeguard here. It is 
44 God " who spoke to the fathers, and not the less 
44 God " because He spoke through the prophets in 
divers portions and divers manners. 

In this first lecture we have to study the con- 
struction of the Old Testament. Criticism has been 
analyzing the volume with the result that we should 



The Old Testament 



13 



now be prepared to enter on the opposite process, 
the synthetic, and, starting from the earliest data, 
see how it was all built up. To take another form 
of illustration, we may regard it as a great river, the 
full flood of which is fed by many streams that have 
their sources far apart from one another among the 
lonely hills. In such a case it is not always easy to 
determine which is the main source. We usually 
fix on the most remote spring; but one or two 
springs may be about equally remote. 



I 

There are several very primitive streams that 
come down to us from the mountains of antiquity, 
and combine to start the river of revelation. Three 
in particular may be indicated, viz, the primitive 
ballads, the primitive traditions, the primitive laws. 

We will start with the primitive ballads. Here 
we have the very earliest beginnings of Scripture. 
It is generally found to be the case that national 
history is first of all treasured up and handed down 
in the form of ballads sung by the soldiers round 
their camp fires at night, and repeated by parents to 
their children. Israel is no exception to this rule. 



14 



The Construction of the Bible 



The earliest books of Hebrew literature of which we 
have any notice are two collections of ballads. One 
is The Booh of Jasher, i.e. " The Book of the Up- 
right," a volume of poems celebrating the feats of 
Jewish heroes. The other is The Book of the Wars 
of the Lord, a collection in which the battles of 
Israel with her enemies are described with a recog- 
nition of the fact that victory had been given by the 
God of Battles, the Lord of Hosts. 

Both of these books have been lost. But they are 
both referred to as sources by writers of later date, 
and some specimens of them have been preserved. 
Thus both the author of Joshua and the author of 
Samuel acknowledged that they draw upon The 
Book of Jasher (Josh. x. 13; 2 Sam. i. 18); and the 
author of Numbers refers to the Booh of the Wars of 
the Lord (Num. xxi. 14). The celebration of 
Joshua's victory over the Amalekites, and the Song 
of Deborah are specimens of the old Hebrew ballads 
■ — one, and perhaps both of them taken from The 
Book of Jasher. The song of the well, " Spring 
up, O Well, etc. (Num. xxi. 17, etc.), seems to have 
come from The Booh of theWars of the Lord. 

These books of ballads, honoring the upright, 
ascribing victory to God, might almost be said to 
have constituted the Bible of the ancient Israelites. 



The Old Testament 



15 



But there is no proof that the people of the times 
when they were in use assigned to them the authority 
that was ascribed later to the Law, and later still to 
the whole Hebrew Scriptures. 

Next, we have the primitive traditions. In their 
origin these must be more ancient than the ballads. 
In most cases, if we may reason by analogy, the old 
ballads are founded on traditions that come down 
from a still more remote age. But in the only 
literary form of it that has been preserved till our 
time, the writing of the ancient traditions is more 
recent than the ballads. Quite apart from contested 
theories of the date and origin of the Pentateuch, it 
is agreed on all sides that the very earliest narratives 
of the patriarchs in Genesis must relate to a period 
much more ancient than that in w r hich the book was 
written. 

Accordingly there have been suggestions to the 
effect that these narratives must be wholly un- 
historical, that they are pure myths, perhaps sun- 
myths, like the Sanskrit and Greek myths of Dyaus 
and Zeus. Jacob is the sun, Rachel the moon, and 
the twelve patriarchs the planets. 

Unfortunately for this pretty theory several ob- 
stinate facts have come to light of late that make for 



16 



The Construction of the Bible 



the historical reality of the lives of the patriarchs. 
There has been too much haste with the solution of 
primitive history into myth in more than one di- 
rection, and recent discoveries are teaching us some 
caution in this matter. The spade of the excavator 
is coming to the rescue of many an old-world story 
that has been treated as a baseless legend, and help- 
ing to substantiate it with the very solid testimony 
of the rocks. 

Thus Dr. Schliemann has dug up the remains of 
ancient Troy. The city, at all events, was not a 
myth. The golden ornaments and other treasures 
found by the same explorer at Mycenae, and now to 
be seen in the museum at Athens, show that the 
people of Homer's time were considerably advanced 
in civilization. These discoveries entirely agree 
with pictures of society in the Iliad and the Odys- 
sey. Quite lately discoveries at Rome are said to 
have substantiated in some measure the existence of 
the kings of Rome, whom Niebuhr and his followers 
had relegated to the realm of myth. Agamemnon 
seems to have been a real person; Romulus may 
prove to have been a real person. The negative 
criticism is shown to have been too hasty in Greece 
and at Rome. 

It is the same in Palestine. The exhuming of the 



The Old Testament 



17 



brick libraries of Babylonian literature is tending to 
support the ancient narratives. A great discovery 
at Tel-el-Amama in Egypt is of peculiar importance. 
This consists of a number of clay tablets, among 
which are certain reports sent in to the reigning 
Pharaoh from his officers in Syria, Palestine, and 
other regions of the East, dating from considerably 
earlier than the times of the exodus. The singular 
fact is that these reports are in the Babylonian lan- 
guage. Like French in our own day, Babylonian 
seems to have been the language of diplomacy and 
official correspondence in these times even for the 
Egyptians. From this fact two important deduc- 
tions may be drawn, as Professor Sayce has shown 
in his work on the ancient monuments. 

First, writing was known and practised in Syria 
and Palestine long before the time of Moses. There 
is no reason, therefore, to deny that the primitive 
traditions may have been written down before that 
time. 

Second, the use of the Babylonian language shows 
that there must have been much communication be- 
tween Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, on the one hand, 
and Babylon on the other, even in these early ages. 

Now the discoveries of Mr. George Smith and 
other Assyriologists have brought to light a striking 



18 



The Construction of the Bible 



resemblance between the Babylonian accounts of the 
Creation, the Flood, etc., and those contained in 
Genesis. From this it has been argued that the 
Bible narratives could not be older than the Captiv- 
ity, when the Jews were brought into close contact 
with the Babylonians. But here, as Professor Sayce 
shows, we come upon a much earlier point of con- 
tact, the date of it being considerably more ancient 
than the time of Moses. 

Therefore, however we are to account for the 
similarity — whether with reference to a common 
tradition, or on the hypothesis that one account is 
derived from the other — it is no argument for a late 
date for the sources of the Bible narratives. 

These are some of the reasons that may incline us 
to believe in the antiquity of the early stories in 
Genesis. But now, as we are considering the com- 
position of the Bible, the question is, How were 
these narratives taken over and worked into the 
book as we have it ? 

It has long been apparent that there are at least 
two streams of narrative in the Pentateuch. Thus 
we have two accounts of the Creation, two accounts 
of the Flood, and so on. It is customary for infidel 
writers to make merry with the differences between 
these parallel narratives. Thus, in the first descrip- 



The Old Testament 



19 



tion of the Creation, man is formed after the ani- 
mals ; in the second, the animals are created later to 
serve him as companions. In one account of the 
Flood all the animals go into the ark by twos and 
threes ; in the other, this is only the case with the 
wild animals, the clean animals and the birds going 
by sevens. 

Surely it is a relief to discover that we have here 
separate ancient records, differing, it is true, in de- 
tail, while substantially supporting the same story. 
In this matter we see a distinction between the sim- 
plicity of the ancient historian and the art of the 
modern writer. The author of our own days boils 
down his materials so as to fuse them into one con- 
sistent narrative. The older historian was little 
more than a compiler, copj T ing out from his sources, 
and where they differed, setting them down side by 
side in their open divergence. It was not his busi- 
ness to reconcile them. We may thank him for his 
ingenuous honesty, for it enables us to get back to 
original sources of his history. 

When we are reading Macaulay or Froude, we do 
not know how much is the reproduction of assured 
information, how much the coloring from imagina- 
tion filled in by the literary artist. When we are 
reading the Pentateuch we can see the very ma- 



20 The Construction of the Bible 



terials out of which the work was built up, and com- 
pare the more ancient with the later. 

Taking the two accounts of the Creation, and the 
two accounts of the Flood, what do we find? There 
is a marked difference in style between them. They 
may be separated by one clear distinction. One 
narrative in each case only uses the word 44 God " for 
the Divine Being; the other has the sacred name 
44 Jehovah." ( 44 The Lord " in our versions.) 

An examination of the Pentateuch and Joshua 
(with which it really forms one work, now known as 
the Hexateuch) throughout has led to the conclusion 
that the second narrative — that with the name 44 Je- 
hovah " — is itself formed out of tw r o earlier narra- 
tives, one that had the sacred name 44 Jehovah," and 
one that originally only used the word 44 God," the 
Hebrew "Elohim." Accordingly the writers of the 
two have been called respectively the 44 Jehovist " 
and the 44 Elohist," and indicated briefly by the ini- 
tials of these titles, J. and E. The two narratives 
were combined into one, which the critics call JE. 
This narrative may also be taken out of the Hexa- 
teuch as one continuous thread of story. It is the 
most attractive part of the book, rich in color, abun- 
dant in vocabulary, composed in a lively, flexible 
style. 



The Old Testament 



21 



The other line of narrative is that which begins 
with the first chapter of Genesis, and is resumed 
again and again in a similar style- That style is 
more bald and precise, and indicates a fondness for 
formulae, often repeating the same phrases. It is 
very much the style of the lawyer. Compare, for 
example, Genesis ii. 4-9 with Genesis i. 26-29. 

That these parallel narratives exist cannot be de- 
nied. They stare us in the face whenever we turn 
over the pages of the Pentateuch, and when once 
their specific characteristics have been pointed out, 
we cannot fail to detect them. They are as marked 
as the differences between the styles of Mr. Ruskin 
and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Do they in any way 
trouble our faith? I cannot see why they should, 
for they simply exemplify the idea of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, that God spoke in divers parts and 
divers manners. That is exactly what we have 
here ; and each narrative is inspired by God to give 
us its own aspect of the ancient story of the world. 

Here, then, we have two streams of ancient origin 
— the ballads and the traditions. A third consists 
of the laws, which are found first in separate rivulets 
that afterward combine in a common stream. Three 
of these rivulets may be clearly discerned as among 
the most early sources of the Pentateuch. 



22 



The Construction of the Bible 



The first is the table of The Ten Commandments, 
which was treasured in the ark that stood in the 
Holy of Holies. Great, broad, moral precepts lie at 
the foundation of the religion of Israel. We have 
the table in two versions (Exod. xx. 1-17 and Deut. 
v. 6-21). 

The second rivulet is the Booh of the Covenant, 
which we have in Exodus xx. 22 to xxiii. This is 
evidently very ancient, with its directions for the 
building of the most primitive altar of unhewn 
stone to which the people were to ascend with their 
sacrifices — very different from the later altar of 
Leviticus, which could only be approached by the 
priests. The book contains a number of directions 
concerning conduct; it is a sort of moral directory. 

The third rivulet of the law is the Law of Holiness, 
which has been preserved and reedited in Leviticus 
xvii. to xxvi. It consists mainly of directions con- 
cerning defilement and cleansing. 

These three, then — the Decalogue, the Book of the 
Covenant, the Law of Holiness— are among the 
sources of the Pentateuch. They date from a period 
prior to the actual composition of the first five books 
of our Old Testament. 

We read in 2 Kings xxii. how, in the reign of King 
Josiah, Hilkiah the priest found the "book of the 



The Old Testament 



23 



law of the Lord " in the temple. A comparison 
with the reformation Josiah based on this book makes 
it highly probable that it was our Deuteronomy. 

Previous to this time Jehovah had been wor- 
shipped at many an altar among the hills of Pales- 
tine. Elijah had repaired one of these altars at 
Carmel, and sacrificed thereon in a great act of wor- 
ship which was signally favored by Divine accept- 
ance. But all such worship is forbidden in 
Deuteronomy, and part of Josiah's reformation was 
to put down the worship at the high places. It had 
become corrupt in its degenerate days ; it was tend- 
ing to idolatry ; it led too much to a localizing of 
the ideas of religion, and to a loss of faith in the 
unity of God as well as a weakening of the sense of 
the unity of the nation. If the great temple at 
Jerusalem were the one centre of sacrificial worship, 
the unity of God would be better appreciated and 
the unity of the nation preserved. 

At the same time, no doubt, less exalted, but still 
very human motives urged on Josiah and his priests ; 
for more honor would come to Jerusalem and her 
priesthood, and more power to the king. 

The discovery of Deuteronomy was the basis of a 
great reformation. Deuteronomy was Josiah's Bible. 
It has been asserted that the book had only just 



24 The Construction of the Bible 



been written, and written for the express purpose of 
supporting Josiah's reformation. It has even been 
asserted that Hilkiah was the author of it. In that 
case he must have presented himself before the king 
with a lie upon his lips, for he said he had found the 
book. 

I cannot believe that a great reformation of re- 
ligion sprang from a deliberate deception. The book 
must have been written some time before Hilkiah's 
discovery of it. Of its earlier history we know noth- 
ing, and conjectures on the subject are of little 
value. But the finding of it was an epoch in the 
history of the Jews. 

We pass on to the days of Ezra. It is now after 
the captivity. A portion of the Jews have returned 
to Jerusalem and rebuilt the city. Then Ezra comes 
up from Babylon, with the book of 44 the law of the 
Lord," which is read to the people assembled in an 
open space before the water gate (Neh. viii.). What 
was this book of 44 the law of the Lord " ? It is 
generally agreed by students of all schools of criti- 
cism that it was the Pentateuch, and in particular, 
as containing what was now regarded as of most 
weight, the book of Leviticus. 

It has been supposed by some that criticism claims 
to have proved that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch de 



The Old Testament 



25 



novo, or at all events that the five books of which it 
is composed — with the exception, perhaps, of Deuter- 
onomy, — were not written until his. day, or at ear- 
liest, till the period of the captivity in Babylon. 

How absurd this idea is, what I have already said 
should make clear to every one of us. Near Banias, 
the Csesarea Philippi of the New Testament, at the 
foot of Mount Hermon, one of the main streams of 
the Jordan bursts suddenly out of a cave from under 
festoons of maiden-hair fern, and plunges into a 
gorge embowered in greenery, a deep, broad, vigor- 
ous, full-fed river at its very birth. Such, according 
to this extraordinary notion, w r ould be the Penta- 
teuch in Ezra's day. Its own contents, when ana- 
lyzed, contradict the idea. It has its sources far 
away in the past in old ballads, old traditions, old 
laws ; and we cannot say when these originated, or 
how early they w r ere written down in the first form 
of them. 

But we now come upon an advance in ritual, ap- 
parent in Leviticus. Was this, then, the invention 
of Ezra and the scribes of his day ? They do not 
give it out as such. They profess to be bringing the 
people their ancient law. What w r e have here is a 
Priestly Code — regulations concerning the priests 
and their rites. 



26 The Construction of the Bible 



Now it is very reasonable to suppose that the 
priests worked according to certain rules long before 
this. A priestly system always implies a ritual. 
But hitherto the ritual had been cherished and de- 
veloped privately among the priests. It had not 
been known to the people. Ezra makes it public. 

Accordingly Ezra's action has been described as a 
blow at the power of the priesthood. It was like 
the work of the Reformers of the sixteenth century 
in getting the Bible and the Church Service turned 
into the vulgar tongue. So long as these were only 
to be had in Latin they were the peculiar property 
of the clergy ; the translation of them made them 
books of the people. We find that Ezra was in some 
measure opposed by the priests. The high priest 
sulked, and would take no part in this popularizing 
of religion. 

Thus we see that Ezra's great work consisted in 
the publication of the law. 

It must be added that he or his contemporaries or 
immediate predecessors had edited it and brought it 
up to date. All the parts of the Pentateuch, which 
we have been tracing in their early separation, are 
now put into one volume, and the narrative which 
begins with the account of creation in Genesis i., the 
more bare and lawyer-like stream of history, written 



The Old Testament 



27 



in harmony with the latest edition of the Priestly 
code, is now worked in with the earlier parallel nar- 
rative. There is some reediting in this process, and 
the final touch is given to the law. 

A few of the modifications now introduced may 
be easily discovered. For example, in Judges the 
Levites are priests, and in Deuteronomy there is no 
distinction between priests and Levites. But in 
Leviticus the Levites are inferior to the priests, are 
simply their attendants and servants. 

From Ezekiel, who had sketched out an ideal for 
the new form of the law, we get the key to the problem 
here presented to us. There had been Levite-priests 
at various places up and down the land in the old days. 
When Josiah suppressed the sacrifices at the high 
places the priests attached to them lost their occupa- 
tion. These men were now brought up to Jerusalem 
with the idea that they should minister at the temple. 
But the temple was already supplied with priests of 
the house of Abiathar, who would not readily admit 
the newcomers to the privileges of their office. Ac- 
cordingly the latter were degraded to an inferior 
rank, and thus the Levites sank into the position of 
a second order in the ministry. Their new position 
is defined and regulated in Leviticus. 



28 The Construction of the Bible 



And now what are we to say of the relation of 
Moses to the law? 

The veneration for him cherished among the Jews 
of ancient times, and the repeated ascription of the 
law to him, suggest the reasonableness of retaining 
the idea so clearly set forth in the Pentateuch that 
Moses was the inspired founder of the religion of 
Israel, and his nation's great lawgiver. From Moses 
the stream of the law descends. There was writing 
earlier than his day. I do not see any reason to 
deny that he left his law in writing. The law is in 
this sense to be attached to the name of Moses. In 
him it originated. He is its great founder. There- 
fore it is emphatically " the law of Moses." But it 
has been developed and much enlarged. 

That some such process as this had gone on has 
always been apparent to the reader of the Penta- 
teuch. Moses could not have written the account of 
his own death and of the subsequent mourning of the 
people for him, nor the eulogy on his character 
which are found in this document (Deut. xxxiv. 7- 
12). It is then a question of degree. 

The fuller developing and enlarging that have 
been brought to light of late in no way lessen the 
religious character of these books, or their claim to 
Divine inspiration. More than 1,500 years ago St. 



The Old Testament 



29 



Jerome wrote, " Whether you wish to say that 
Moses is the author of the Pentateuch, or that Ezra 
restored it, is indifferent to me." 

Here, then, we have the first volume of the Jewish 
Scriptures complete. When the Samaritans set up 
their worship at Mount Gemini, it was the Penta- 
teuch that they adopted as their Bible. Though 
other books were added later in Palestine, the 
Samaritans had nothing to do with these additions, 
and therefore to this day the Pentateuch, and the 
Pentateuch alone, is the Samaritan Bible. 

Among the Jews the Pentateuch was always es- 
teemed the most important section of their Scrip- 
tures. It is the glory of the Pentateuch that is 
celebrated in the 119th Psalm. The Pentateuch is 
repeatedly quoted and referred to by New Testa- 
ment writers with the greatest reverence. For us 
its law is of less interest than for the Jews ; but its 
glowing narratives are among our choicest posses- 
sions. 

II 

In the New Testament we read of the Hebrew 
Scriptures under the name of " The law and the 
Prophets. " Let us pass on to the second volume of 



30 



The Construction of the Bible 



the Old Testament — the Prophets. This was later 
than the Law in being put together, and accepted 
by the Jews as of the canon of Scripture ; but much 
of it was written in very early times. 

The stream of prophetic teaching ran in a distinct 
channel apart from that of the law. The two had 
this in common, that they both opposed idolatry, 
Baal-worship, heathenism, and that they both taught, 
and enforced the worship of the one God Jehovah, 
in purity of life, as becomes the service of the Holy 
One. Thus they represent the essential unity of 
the Old Testament religion. But within the bounds 
of that unity they differ widely in spirit and 
method. 

The priests were the official leaders of religion ; 
the prophets, freer and less formal leaders. The 
prophets were often in opposition to the Church of 
their time. So they frequently appear as Noncon- 
formists with a teaching unwelcome to the estab- 
lished officials. Their appeal for reformation was as 
distasteful to the wealthy, luxurious priest of their 
day, as the Methodist preaching in the eighteenth 
century was to the contemporary fox-hunting par- 
son. Not seldom the prophet had occasion to de- 
nounce the corrupt conduct of the priest. 

Then, on broader grounds, quite apart from per- 



The Old Testament 



31 



sonal conduct and official jealousy, the whole course 
of the thought and teaching of the prophets differed 
from that of the priests. It is prophetic teaching 
that " obedience is better than sacrifice," "that God 
will have mercy, and not sacrifice/' The prophets 
insist on righteousness of conduct. The ceremonial 
is an abomination in the sight of God if it is used 
as an excuse or as a cloak for neglect of the pri- 
mary duties. 

The opening chapter of Isaiah is just a specimen 
of the prophetic teaching in this direction (see es- 
pecially Isa. i. 10-18). No wonder it is the prophet, 
rather than the priest, with whom the New Testa- 
ment writer is most in sympathy. St. Paul shows 
how the law was but an interlude added because of 
the hardness of the people's hearts. In the prophets 
are seeds of ideas that blossom to full flower in the 
New Testament. Here are gleams of the dawning 
light, faint anticipations of the rich spiritual truth of 
the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The book which the Jews called 44 The Prophets " 
— the second volume of the Hebrew Bible — was 
divided by the rabbis into two parts, called respect- 
ively The Former Prophets and The Latter Prophets. 
The books of 44 The Former Prophets " are the his- 
tories of the kingdom, and consist of Joshua, Judges, 



32 



The Construction of the Bible 



Samuel, and Kings ; the books of 44 The Latter 
Prophets " are those that we now read under the 
names of the several prophets. 

The first part — The Former Prophets — came to be 
reckoned in the volume of the prophets simply be- 
cause the books were supposed to have been written 
by prophets. But we may see a further fitness in 
the association. The history — in the Kings es- 
pecially — is written from the standpoint of the 
prophets ; it breathes the spirit of the prophets, just 
as the Pentateuch, as we have it in the final form of 
its laws and narratives, is in sympathy with the 
priestly position. 

The glory of the history of the kingdoms of 
Judah and Israel rises out of the fact that this his- 
tory is represented to us in the light of the 
prophet's teaching — its moral character dissected, its 
transactions judged, its lessons deduced by men 
whom God had inspired to write it from the high- 
ground of prophecy and in the pure light of revela- 
tion. 

Herein is the essential difference between 44 secu- 
lar " and 44 sacred " history. It is not that God was 
with the Jews, but not with the English. It is that 
the history of the Jews was written by prophets, 
while the history of England has been written by 



The Old Testament 



33 



men whose highest claims are their scholarship and 
their literary ability. The incomparable value of 
this history for all ages is to be traced to its unique 
origin. 

But these prophet- writers, while they were in- 
spired by God with great principles of eternal truth 
and a peculiar faculty for discerning the moral is- 
sues at stake, were not saved the trouble of using 
ordinary means for collecting information concerning 
the bare facts of history. They frequently refer to 
their authorities. Thus mention is. made of 44 The 
Book of the Acts of Solomon " (1 Kings xi. 41). 
44 The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel 
and Judah" is often appealed to. This was not our 
Chronicles, which is more recent than Kings; ap- 
parently it was a sort of court register. Then the 
narrative of Elijah and Elisha seems to have been 
taken from some ancient history of the prophets. 

Probably the books of Kings were written soon 
after the destruction of Jerusalem ; they carry the 
narrative down to that event, and stop there. Chron- 
icles is a second version of the same story, founded 
on Kings, but written after Ezra's publication of 
the law. The writer's aim is to treat the history in 
view of the teaching of the law. So it may be said 
to be a priestly edition of the history. We do not 



34 



The Construction of the Bible 



know who wrote it; but it would seem to have 
formed one work with the books of Ezra and Nehe- 
miah. 

These four books were not included among the 
Prophets. They had their place in a third volume, 
to which I shall call attention a little later. The 
Former Prophets consisted simply of Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel and Kings. 

The Latter Prophets consisted of four books — viz, 
the three great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Eze- 
kiel, and the minor prophets, the twelve being taken 
as a single book. 

We must not suppose that the " minor prophets " 
are men of a secondary order, inferior to that of the 
three great prophets. They are so called simply be- 
cause but little of the writings of any of them has 
been preserved, so that their books are all short. 
The book of Ezekiel is ten times longer than the 
book of Amos; but we cannot say that the priest- 
prophet of the exile was ten times greater than the 
herdsman of Tekoa. 

The earliest prophets have left no writings. Per- 
haps they did not write. We have no hint that 
Elijah and Elisha published books. They were men 
of action, who made their influence felt by word of 
mouth, not always in set orations, sometimes by 



The Old Testament 



35 



means of short messages from God, that struck like 
thunderbolts. 

Even the later prophets were led into writing by 
force of circumstances. They were preachers, and 
their productions were of the nature of sermons. 
Now the sermon is made to be spoken. If it is also 
published in a literary form, this is but a secondary 
business. 

In some cases, apparently, we have reports of 
what the prophet said noted down and treasured by 
disciples, and these notes perhaps broken and abbre- 
viated. This is how they come to be obscure. Amos 
reads very like a collection of reporter's notes taken 
from the prophet's spoken utterances. 

Amos is the earliest of the prophets whose writ- 
ings have been preserved ; his date is from 760 to 
746 b. c. ; and Hosea is of the same period. It was 
the mission of these men to denounce national sin 
and wickedness in high places — Amos with threats 
of punishment, Hosea with gracious invitations to 
repentance. 

Isaiah follows in the second half of the century, 
and with him are contemporary Micah and Nahum. 
In the great book of Isaiah we have a collection of 
many prophetic utterances extending over a number 
of years. We do not know whether the prophet 



36 



The Construction of the Bible 



edited and published them himself, or whether this 
was done by his disciples after his death. 

It is now agreed among most students of the sub- 
ject that the latter part of the book of Isaiah, from 
the fortieth chapter onward, as well as some earlier 
portions, were composed by some prophet or prophets 
during the captivity. The whole situation is changed. 
Isaiah is full of the life of his times, and he writes 
in the first instance for his contemporaries ; but the 
later part of the book makes no claim to be the 
work of Isaiah. It is written from the standpoint 
of the captivity, to comfort the exiles in their pres- 
ent distress, and cheer them with the prospect of de- 
liverance. This great utterance is equally valuable, 
equally true, equally Divine, though it is to be dated 
from the time of the captivity. 

When we come to the age of Jeremiah, we have 
another instance of a collection of the separate ut- 
terances of a prophet in one volume. Here, how- 
ever, we learn that these utterances were deliber- 
ately dictated and written out by the express wish 
of the speaker in order that they might be preserved. 

Nearly contemporary with Jeremiah are the ob- 
scure prophets, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Obadiah. 
i This is at the end of the 7th century B.C. Then 



The Old Testament 



37 



comes the captivity, the greatest break in the history 
of the Jews. Besides the author of the last chapters 
of Isaiah, Ezekiel belongs to this period. He is of 
the captive priests carried off after one of the 
earlier invasions before the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Ezekiel is a literary prophet. There is now no 
possibility of influencing the nation by speech, as 
the people are scattered, and they have no centre. 
If they are to be addressed, it must be by the pen. 
This is the first peculiarity of Ezekiel. 

Another is not less remarkable/ Like Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel is a priest as well as a prophet, and to him 
the priesthood means much more than it signifies to 
his great contemporary. He is keenly interested in 
the Temple ritual, and he draws an elaborate picture 
of its future restoration. 

Now this is very remarkable. Formerly the 
priests were jealous of the prophets, and the prophets 
scorned the priests. That was the old condition. It 
is to exist no longer. From Ezekiel onward the 
prophets are interested in the Temple and its min- 
istry. But then it is a new and purified priesthood 
that they encourage. 

After the return from the captivity there was a 
great increase of attention to ritual on the part of 
the Jews ; but this ritual was no longer merely a 



38 



The Construction of the Bible 



formal procedure — it was the expression of the re- 
awakening of religious life among the people. We 
may think it unfortunate that the revival took this 
turn. But the failure of the older prophecy to lay 
hold of the nation had proved that men and women 
were not ripe for the more spiritual type of religion. 
This was never attained until Jesus Christ appeared 
and made it possible for His followers. 

At the time we are now considering, the religion 
aided by symbolism that the priests administered 
was more within the reach of the Jews. It was a 
decline from the ideal of such prophets as Isaiah and 
Jeremiah ; but that ideal had never been reached by 
the people. The religion of the more ritualistic 
form was within their reach. Therefore it seemed 
to suit the awakening spirit of devotion. 

The three prophets of the return are Haggai, who 
encouraged Zerubbabel in building the Temple, and 
Zechariah and Malachi a hundred years later. By 
the time of the last-named prophet the zeal of the 
great revival has died down. But the priestly idea of 
religion is not abandoned. In a tone very different 
from that of Isaiah, Malachi rebukes the Jews for 
not paying their tithes to support the priests and the 
Temple services. 

We cannot tell when all these books of the 



The Old Testament 



39 



prophets were put together. It must have been 
subsequent to the publishing of the law by Ezra, for 
some of them were not even written then. Probably 
it was some three or four hundred years before Christ. 
Thus at length we have the two volumes which the 
Jews read in their synagogue services as The Law 
and The Prophets. 

Ill 

In the last place we have to consider the forma- 
tion of a third volume, containing the remaining 
books of the Old Testament. Among the rabbis this 
went by the name of " the Writings." In Greek it 
is called the Hagiographa y or the " Sacred Writings." 
It consists in the main of two classes of literature 
— poetry and philosophy. 

In Hebrew poetry the first place must be given to 
the Book of Psalms, to many of us the most 
precious garland of the choicest flowers of the older 
revelation. It was the hymn-book of the ancient 
Jewish Church, and it affords the most perfect ex- 
pression for the devotion of the Christian Church of 
all denominations in all ages, speaking from the 
heart to the heart in the truest language of the 
heart. Here deep calleth unto deep. They who 



40 The Construction of the Bible 



know most by experience of the deep things of God 
are most warm in their appreciations of the Hebrew 
psalter. 

This book is popularly designated " The Psalms of 
David," but evidently it is a collection of lyrics from 
many writers living in various ages. By the Jews it 
was divided into five books. Various characteristic 
distinctions among the several groups of psalms may 
be observed. Thus we have psalms that make men- 
tion of the name " Jehovah," and others that simply 
use the word " God " (Elohim). 

Possibly the composition of these psalms ranged 
over several centuries. No one can say exactly 
when the earliest of them was written. There are 
some who would date the latest in the time of the 
Maccabees. This would be very interesting if it 
could be proved, for it would show that the centuries 
between the time usually assigned to the close of 
the Old Testament and New Testament times were 
by no means barren of inspiration, were not, as they 
have been described, centuries of silence. It would 
remove the strange anomaly of the supposed fact 
that the most glorious period in the history of the 
Jews, which was also the time of the deepest and 
most widespread devotion, was barren of all inspired 
prophecy. 



The Old Testament 



41 



Still we cannot understand the coming of the 
Spirit. Frequently the prophet of God has given 
utterance to his most luminous thoughts in the 
darkest seasons of national and religious depression. 
No sure proof has been furnished of the existence of 
what are called "Maccabean Psalms/' and it is diffi- 
cult to see how compositions of so late a date could 
have appeared in the Septuagint version of the 
Psalms. 

Hebrew philosophy is very different from Greek 
philosophy. The Semitic mind takes but little in- 
terest in abstract metaphysics. With the Jew, phi- 
losophy is practical wisdom. This finds its highest 
expression in the Book of Proverbs. Clustering 
round the name of the great king Solomon are the 
wise sayings of many sages of various ages. Here 
we have the root and spring of a whole order of lit- 
erature, known as the " Wisdom " literature. 

A great poem — the grandest product of Hebrew 
genius — the Book of Job, is classed with this litera- 
ture. We find it in the third volume of the Jews' 
Bible — among the Sacred Writings. The poem is 
occupied with the most profound problem of provi- 
dence, with the dark mystery of evil. Yet it does 
not face its theme in the cool temper of the philoso- 



42 



The Construction of the Bible 



pher. Illumined with imagination, fired with pas- 
sion, it throws its arguments into the form of a 
vigorous, life-like dialogue, using irony and even 
sarcasm as its weapons of controversy. The whole 
appears as a sort of drama. The date of the poem 
cannot be fixed exactly. Probably it comes some- 
where near the time of the Babylonian captivity. 

Five books of this last volume of the Hebrew 
Bible were known among the Jews as the Five 
Megilloth) i. e. the 44 Five Rolls." These were hon- 
ored by being read at certain festivals. They are 
the Song of Songs for the Passover, Ruth for the 
Pentecost, Lamentations for the ninth of the month 
Ab (the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem), 
Ecclesiastes for the Tabernacles, and Esther for the 
Purim. They were written at widely separated 
periods of time — the Song of Songs probably in the 
early days of the ten kingdoms, Esther as one of the 
very latest books of the Old Testament. 

We only meet with the Book of Daniel late in 
the history of the construction of the Hebrew Bible. 
It was not placed by the Jews among the prophets ; 
it stands in the third and final volume. 

It is not easy to say when this volume was put to- 
gether. The prologue to Ecclesiasticus was written 
in the year 132 b. c, and the author of it tells us 



The Old Testament 



43 



that his grandfather had given himself to the study 
of " the law and the prophets and the other books 
of the fathers." His grandfather — the statement 
brings us back to about 200 b. c. This vague ex- 
pression, however, will not be enough to assure us 
that all the books of our Old Testament were in- 
cluded. 

But by the end of the second century, at latest, 
the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures was complete, 
though some questions were subsequently raised 
concerning one or two of the books. Doubts were 
still felt about the authority of Ecclesiastes and the 
Song of Songs ; even after the time of Christ there 
were differences of opinion among the Jews as to 
the right of Esther to be in the canon. Still, these 
books were all retained, and the Old Testament, now 
completed, came to be universally accepted among 
the Jews in its entirety as Holy Scripture, though a 
preeminent rank was still and always assigned to 
the first volume, that of the Law. 

This Bible of the Jews was translated into Greek 
in Egypt, most, if not all of it before the time of 
Christ. 

Meanwhile a number of later Jewish writings had 
appeared. In Egypt these, too, were translated into 
Greek, and incorporated with the older Scriptures. 



44 



The Construction of the Bible 



They are known to us as the " Apocrypha." The 
value of them is very unequal. The Book of Wis- 
dom and Ecclesiasticus are treasures of rich and 
lofty teaching. The story of Bel and the Dragon is 
a mere childish tale. Yet these books, being in the 
Greek Old Testament, were all taken by the Chris- 
tian fathers as Scriptures. 

When Jerome translated the Old Testament into 
Latin, that it might be understood by the people 
who spoke Latin, he included these writings. That 
is how they appear in the Latin Bible, the only Bible 
of all western Christendom for a thousand years, the 
Bible of the Roman Catholics of our own age. 
Thence they passed into the earlier English Bibles. 
The Council of Trent pronounced them to be in- 
spired Scriptures. 

The Reformers, in refusing to admit them as au- 
thoritative in matters of doctrine, and so taking up 
this position of difference from the Catholic Church, 
agreed with the great body of the Jews who never 
received them as Scripture. In so doing they also 
followed the lead of the New Testament writers. 
Some of these writers knew part, at least, of the 
Apocrypha. The author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews shows that he was acquainted with the 



The Old Testament 



45 



Book of Wisdom. But none of them cite any part 
of the Apocrypha as Scripture. 

Other Jewish books, which were not even in- 
cluded in the Apocrypha — such as the Book of Enoch 
and the Assumption of Moses — are quoted in the New 
Testament, just as even heathen poets are quoted by 
St. Paul. But they are not treated as Scripture. 
The Bible of the Apostles is just our Old Testament. 

We see, then, that this book entirely agrees with 
what is said of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It 
was written by many hands, during a long period of 
time, in various styles. We may be thankful that 
the most recent research has brought these points 
out with a new clearness, for in so doing it has 
added much to the interest of the book. 

And now, in conclusion, I would wish to commend 
to you the careful study of the Old Testament. 
There is a tendency in some quarters to undervalue 
and neglect it. There are those who regard it as 
wholly superseded by the New Testament. That 
was not the teaching of Christ and His apostles. It 
is true we must be careful not to fall into the mis- 
take of setting it on the same plane with the fuller 
revelation contained in the New Testament. But 



46 The Construction of the Bible 



read with the right perspective, it is full of interest 
and weighty with great teaching. 

Firsts it shows us the beginnings of revelation, 
and helps us to trace the Divine light from dawn to 
day. 

Second } its incomparable narratives, the delight of 
our childhood, are alive with lessons for all time. 

Third) in the prophets especially we have the loft- 
iest principles of public righteousness expounded 
and enforced. 

In New Testament times there were no politics, 
because the Roman Empire had suppressed and ex- 
tinguished all political freedom. The only political 
duty possible to the subject of a Roman province 
was to " submit to the powers that be." 

It was otherwise in the days of the Hebrew king- 
doms. The prophets were the teachers of the two 
nations in public as well as private ethics, and there- 
fore it is to the prophets that we can go for instruc- 
tion in the righteousness that exalteth a nation. It 
can scarcely be affirmed that their trenchant utter- 
ances concerning the true principles of public life 
are not needed in Christendom to-day. 

Fourth) in the Psalter we have the heart-breath- 
ings of devotion for all ages. Can we afford to dis- 
pense with the 23d Psalm — that loveliest Divine 



The Old Testament 47 



pastoral? or the 51st — the cry of the penitent, the 
natural accompaniment of the parable of the Prodi- 
gal Son? or the 90th — the noblest funeral dirge? or 
the 91st — leading us to the secret place of the Most 
High ? or many a hymn of right jubilant praise that 
lifts us to heaven as with the wing and song of a 
lark? 

But, above all, we have our Lord's advice to search 
the Scriptures — and by " the Scriptures," of course, 
He meant simply the Old Testament — because they 
testify of Him. Here we discover the foundation of 
the great Christ-idea, the true preparation for the 
coming of Him who, as concerns the past, is " the 
root and offspring of David," while, as touching the 
future, He is " the bright and morning Star." 



II. HOW THE NEW TESTAMENT WAS CONSTRUCTED 

The only Bible that the Christians of New Tes- 
tament times possessed was the Old Testament. 
Their enemies were champions of the Law. The 
Christians delighted to read in the Prophets, where 
they found foreshadowings of Christ, His sufferings 
and His victory, and at their meetings for worship 
they would read out of the roll of this second 
volume of the Jewish Scriptures. 

The several books of the New Testament were 
written at various times ; there was no printing 
press to multiply copies; and at first they must 
have been confined within very narrow circles of 
readers. There is no indication that the scattered 
groups of readers of the different books had the re- 
motest idea that these works were destined to be 
collected together and added to the old Jewish 
Bible. 

I 

Probably the first book of the New Testament 
was the Epistle of St. James — an epistle addressed 
to Jewish Christians. This could not have been 

48 



The New Testament 



49 



written during the course of the great controversy 
between the rigorous Jewish Christians, who claimed 
St. James as their leader, and the disciples of St. 
Paul, for it gives no hint of the occurrence of that 
earthquake in the primitive Church. There are 
those who would set it quite late. But it is exceed- 
ingly primitive in character. Its theology is of the 
elementary kind which might be expected to pre- 
cede the deep thinking of St. Paul. It refers to the 
church as a synagogue — a very primitive title, im- 
plying, apparently, that some synagogue of Jews 
had gone over in a body to Christianity. 

So little of the full Christian doctrine is there in 
the epistle, that one of the latest writers on it — 
Spitta — has tried to show that it is in reality a Jew- 
ish book, which the Christians had simply adopted, 
inserting the name of Christ in two places. Against 
this daring theory there stands one peculiarly strong 
objection. St. James' epistle, more than any other 
book of the New Testament, except the gospels, 
teems with echoes and reminiscences of the teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ. It does not say anything 
about Him personally, only mentioning His name on 
two occasions ; but it is full of His thoughts. 

James was slow to believe in his wonderful 
Brother. Before the resurrection he withheld his 



50 



The Construction of the Bible 



adhesion to the new movement. Then the risen 
Christ appeared to him — we know not where, nor 
under what circumstances — and James became a 
professed disciple, soon to be raised to the vacant 
seat of presidency among the Christians at Jeru- 
salem. 

His epistle is charmingly written in very good 
Greek. Its sound, practical lessons stand for all 
time. We shall be slow to agree with Luther in 
calling it an 44 epistle of straw." If it does not con- 
tain much gospel meat, the salt of its wholesome 
teaching on conduct is a much-needed article of 
diet. 

St. Paul's epistles range themselves in four peri- 
ods, three of which are comprised in about ten 
years, from A. d. 53 to A. d. 63. 

The first period gives us the two Epistles to the 
Thessalonians— written about the year 53. Like St. 
James' Epistle, they come before the great con- 
troversy with Judaizing Christians. The only op- 
ponents St. Paul has to contend with as yet are 
unbelieving Jews. The epistles are addressed to a 
Church consisting chiefly of working people — weav- 
ers, fishermen, dock laborers. 

We should not look for any profound speculations 
here ; and we do not find them. There is some 



The New Testament 



51 



trouble about deaths iu the brotherhood, these sim- 
ple people having assumed that Christians were not 
to die at all — even the natural death of the body. 
Living in daily expectation of the return of their 
Lord, they were sadly perplexed that any of their 
number should have been taken away before that 
glorious event. Would these departed souls miss 
the joy of the Advent? St. Paul reassures the 
Church in its anxiety on this account. Certainly 
they will not be precluded from meeting the Lord 
at His coming. On the contrary, the dead in Christ 
shall have the privilege of being the first to greet 
Him. 

What a very primitive condition of the Church 
we have here ? The question, if ever it arose at all, 
could only have come up when the very first occur- 
rence of death startled the happy community out of 
their sanguine dream. 

The eager expectation of the coming of the Lord 
had another unfortunate effect. Some people ceased 
to work. Was not the end of all things at hand ? 
Then why build houses nobody would have occasion 
to inhabit? Why weave garments nobody would 
need to wear? This dangerous tendency must be 
severely rebuked. " If any will not work/' says 
the apostle very practically, " neither let him eat." 



52 



The Construction of the Bible 



Religious enthusiasm is not to be an excuse for idly- 
poaching on the generosity of our fellow-Christians. 

An interval of some four or five years follows the 
writing of these two letters to the Thessalonians — 
years big with events : first, in the extension of St. 
Paul's evangelistic work; second, in the breaking 
out of the controversy with the Judaizers. 

The epistles of the second group were all written 
within a twelvemonth — from a.d. 57 to a.d. 58. They 
are four in number — the two to the Corinthians, the 
Epistle to the Galatians, and that to the Romans. 
These four productions of the apostle to the Gentiles 
are his most vigorous and significant works. They 
bring us into close contact with the great soul of the 
writer, and they set before us his chief ideas — those 
that constitute what he calls " my gospel " — i.e. the 
gospel he had received not from man, but directly 
from God — the gospel of free grace through faith 
for every human being, irrespective of nation, race, 
or privilege. The attacks of opponents had called 
for this very pronounced statement. 

Theological definiteness is generally the outcome 
of controversy. This is some compensation for the 
pain and ill-feeling that controversy is apt to engen- 
der. Doctrines that were previously quite vague 



The New Testament 



53 



attain to clearness of outline and crispness of state- 
ment in the sharp antithesis of debate. 

The debate which runs through St. Paul's four 
great epistles is one that touches the very life of 
Christianity. Was it necessary to become a Jew in 
order to be a Christian ? Must the convert from the 
Gentile world be circumcised and keep the law as a 
Jew, if he is to be received into the Church? To 
say 44 Yes " in response to questions such as these 
was to make Christianity but a branch of Judaism — 
a narrow, national, temporal creed/ 

It was worse ; it was to leave the Jew in bondage 
to the law, and to introduce the Gentile to that irk- 
some yoke — i.e., in effect it was to destroy the gospel, 
and offer Christ and the law instead of Christ and 
the gospel. But Christ received together with the 
law would be only a Jewish Messiah, not the Saviour 
of the world — not really a Saviour at all, but only a 
second Moses, a Judge and Ruler of His people. 

In opposition to this narrowing, stifling doctrine, 
St. Paul insisted on the glorious freedom of the 
grace of God and the simple condition of faith for 
the reception of that grace. It was a desperate 
effort. He had to contend single-handed against a 
host of bigots, the twelve apostles giving him no 



54 



The Construction of the Bible 



material assistance, perhaps not wholly sympathizing 
with his daring innovations. 

The two epistles which set forth the apostle's 
teaching on this question most clearly and forcibly 
are those to the Galatians and the Romans. They 
do so in very different styles and tempers. The 
Galatians, as Professor Ramsay has recently dem- 
onstrated, were the apostle's old converts in the 
cities of his first missionary journey — Antioch, 
Iconium, Derbe, and Lystra. These had been his 
most devoted disciples. But the Judaizers had 
crept in and wrought havoc in the flock. The 
Churches had been ensnared — they must have been 
" bewitched/' says the apostle — so that they had 
entangled themselves with Jewish practices, Gentiles 
as they were, and had come to show coldness toward 
their spiritual father, St. Paul. 

It was like the case of the converts of an evan- 
gelical mission among the heathen falling into the 
hands of the Jesuits and going over to Roman 
Catholicism. Naturally the apostle was indignant. 
His letter, from beginning to end, is one of warm 
expostulation. 

At Rome the circumstances were very different. 
St. Paul was no longer writing to his own converts 
when addressing his letter to the metropolis of 



The New Testament 



55 



the empire ; the Church had been founded by- 
others. The apostle approaches the Roman Chris- 
tians with the courtesy and considerateness of a 
gentleman addressing strangers. He is anxious to 
explain his own gospel, rather than to controvert 
opponents; or, if he has any opponents in view, they 
are Jews, not Judaizing Christians. Yet his doc- 
trine is the same — free grace on God's side, faith on 
the part of men. 

In writing to the Corinthians, while these contro- 
versies and the doctrines they touch are always in 
mind, the apostle is more immediately concerned 
with other questions. He has heard from slaves of 
the household of a certain Chloe that there are grave 
disorders among his converts at Corinth — miserable 
party divisions, a case of gross immorality, Christians 
going to law with their brother Christians in the 
heathen courts, ill-regulated Church meetings, abuses 
in the love-feast where well-to-do people bring their 
private stores of food, eat greedily, and even 
become intoxicated, while their poorer brethren are 
left neglected. 

We could hardly believe such disgraceful things 
of one of the primitive Churches, if we had not the 
evidence in the apostle's own words. The Chris- 
tians were called "saints"; but evidently such a 



56 



The Construction of the Bible 



Church as that at Corinth was disgracefully lax. 
We may hope that, with all our faults, we have 
advanced beyond the condition of partial emergence 
from heathenism, in which this very elementary 
community was existing when St. Paul directed his 
two epistles to it. We should remember that this 
was a missionary Church surrounded by the vices of 
a most corrupt pagan civilization. 

Still, the lofty ideals of Christian ethics had been 
set before the Corinthians ; no laxity could be con- 
doned. Point after point the apostle takes up and 
presses home with strenuous expostulations. 

Such a letter was little expected. The Corinthi- 
ans had written to St. Paul seeking his advice on 
certain questions of casuistry which might be com- 
pared with the questions in our Augustine's corre- 
spondence with Gregory the Great, recorded by 
Bede — on the advisability or otherwise of marriage, 
on eating food that had been presented to idols, etc. 
All these questions the apostle postpones till he has 
disposed of the infinitely graver matters made 
known to him by the members of Chloe's household. 
At length he comes to the correspondence, answer- 
ing the questions seriatim, with a breadth of treat- 
ment combined with a considerateness for people of 



The New Testament 



67 



weaker consciences or narrower judgments that is a 
model for all similar occasions. 

The second epistle has less pressing matter to 
deal with. It is written a few months later than the 
first, after the apostle has left Ephesus, and while he 
is in Macedonia on his way round to Greece, 
collecting the contributions for the poor of the Jeru- 
salem Church. 

In the meantime the riot at Ephesus has taken 
place. The apostle has suffered ; his work has been 
broken up. The Corinthians also have been plunged 
into grief. Thus that letter comes to be one for 
troubled souls, touching the deepest things of ex- 
perience, and pointing to the highest consolations of 
God. The apostle here recounts his own experience 
— his terrible hardships, his hair-breadth escapes, 
his joy in all suffering endured for the sake of his 
Lord. 

The third group of St. Paul's epistles dates from 
the period of his imprisonment at Rome. These 
epistles seem to have been written a little after the 
year 62. They also are four — viz, those to the 
Philippians, the Ephesians, the Colossians, and 
Philemon. They have a common character which 
marks them off from the preceding group. 

The storm-tossed vessel is now in quiet waters. 



58 



The Construction of the Bible 



The warrior is at rest. The conflict is over. Peace 
and joy reign in the heart of the apostle. Yet he is 
a prisoner at Rome, about to appear before Nero, and 
doubtful as to the issue of his trial. Inactivity is 
forced upon him. But while an unchastened soul 
would fret at the restraints, St. Paul has found 
that 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage." 

He has inward freedom because he has learned, in 
whatsoever state he is, to be independent of circum- 
stances ; and the secret of this attainment is that he 
can do all things through the Divine Strengthener. 

Christ is the centre of each of these epistles — 
that to the Philippians revealing the joy and 
strength of personal union with Christ ; that to the 
Ephesians the blessedness of the Church's con- 
nection with Christ; that to the Colossians the 
supremacy of Christ owr all creation. The grace- 
ful little note to Philemon is a sort of appendix to 
the Colossian letter, breathing the very essence of 
the Christ-spirit in its request for the pardon of an 
escaped slave. 

The fourth and last group consists of three 
epistles addressed to individual men, two to Timothy 



The New Testament 



59 



and one to Titus. They are known as the 11 Pastoral 
Epistles," because they deal with the duties of 
Christian ministers. These have been questioned 
more than any other of the Pauline epistles, chiefly 
on three grounds. 

First, that it is impossible to find a place in the 
" Acts " narrative where the journeys and associa- 
tions to which they refer can be located. 

Second, that the language differs from the apostle's 
style and vocabulary in his undoubted epistles. 

Third, that the Church government and the 
heresies here referred to point to a later age. 

The answer suggested to the first objection is 
found in the theory of acquittal in the trial before 
Nero, followed by a period of renewed missionary 
activity, which leads to a second imprisonment. Ac- 
cording to Roman law St. Paul ought to have been 
acquitted at his first trial — Agrippa saw this (Acts 
xxvi. 32). Nero had not yet entered on his wild 
career of blood, and he had no grudge against the 
Christians. 

The answer given to the second objection is that 
the apostle's reading at Rome would have intro- 
duced him to a wider knowledge of the Greek 
language. 

The answer offered to the third is that the de- 



60 



The Construction of the Bible 



velopment of the Church shown in these epistles is 
not at all what we see in the second century. But 
the whole subject is one for careful investigation 
among the more difficult problems of New Testament 
history. 

In touching on these four groups of St. Paul's 
epistles, I have not mentioned the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. You may take it as established that this 
epistle was not written by St. Paul. The title in 
our Bible is a late addition. The epistle itself makes 
no claim to be St. Paul's. It is only assigned to the 
apostle by a Church tradition, and other Church 
traditions assign it to other writers. 

In the present day some critics attribute it to 
Luke, some to Barnabas, some to Apollos, some to 
an unknown author. It seems impossible to settle 
the question with the scanty information that is all 
we possess; but the literary style and the treat- 
ment of the Old Testament are so very different 
from St. Paul's that we may be sure, whoever 
wrote the epistle, the great apostle was not the au- 
thor of it. 

Nevertheless, it is a glorious, inspired work. The 
immediate aim of it was to reassure wavering Jewish 
Christians, who were in danger of losing heart and 
even of losing faith, because, in being expelled from 



The New Testament 



61 



the synagogue, they had lost the privileges cherished 
by their fathers. 

The writer shows that these much-prized priv- 
ileges were but shadows of good "things to come ; 
while in the gospel those good things themselves are 
to be obtained, so that the Christian has in a better 
and more effectual way all that the Jews claimed to 
possess. 

The two epistles ascribed to St. Peter come a little 
later. The first is rich in the very juice and marrow 
of Christian truth. The autharship of the second 
has been more doubted than that of any other book 
of the New Testament. This epistle has absorbed 
and reproduced, verse by verse, almost the whole of 
the little epistle of Jude. 

The three epistles of John come last of all — 
touching expressions of the aged apostle's deepest 
convictions and warmest feelings at the very end of 
his long life, written toward the close of the first 
century. 

These epistles of James, Paul, Peter, Jude and 
John, together with the Epistle to the Hebrews, are 
the works of at least six inspired writers. At first 
there was no attempt to bring them together into 
one volume. They were sent to separate Churches 
or to private persons. The writers betray no notion 



62 



The Construction of the Bible 



that they are ever to be published for the benefit of 
the whole world. 

No doubt the authors would have been amazed if 
they had foreseen the minute study to which their 
fugitive writings were destined to be subjected by 
many minds in many ages. But God was using 
these writers not merely for the sake of the tempo- 
rary purposes they had in view. Unknown to them- 
selves their inspired works were fitted to serve in 
later days for the instruction in Christian truth of 
nations concerning the very existence of which they 
could have had no conception. 

" This is the Lord's doing ; it is marvellous in our 
eyes." 

II 

Another group of writings next invites our at- 
tention. The four gospels were all written later 
than most of the epistles. Yet they rightly take the 
first place in our New Testament. They narrate 
events that precede the epistles ; and in those events 
they give the key to all that follows, showing the 
root and foundation of the new Christian life, the 
development of which is illustrated in the epistles. 

The topic to which they are devoted — the life and 



The New Testament 



63 



teaching of Jesus Christ — marks them out as of 
paramount importance. Here we are at the citadel 
of the faith. "Matthew's gospel," says Renan, "is 
the most important book that has ever been written." 
When we consider the vast extent of the world's 
library, and the priceless value of the masterpieces 
of the literature of all nations in all ages, it seems a 
bold thing to make such an assertion of this one lit- 
tle tract. And yet, what book can be put before one 
of the gospels ? We may not all of us select Mat- 
thew in particular for the crowning pinnacle of 
glory ; but it is safe to say that, taken together, our 
gospels are the four golden spires of the great tem- 
ple of literature. 

It is not the literary charm of these books that 
gives them their preeminence, although their grand 
simplicity, their unconscious directness, their singu- 
lar skill in saying much with few words, point out 
the evangelists as men of no mean order, even when 
judged at the bar of common prose authorship. But 
the supreme glory of the gospels comes from their 
subject. Never before had writers such a theme. 

Let us now inquire how these four gospels were 
written. They naturally group themselves as three 
and one. The first three gospels have much in com- 
mon, and they have been named the Synoptics, from 



64 



The Construction of the Bible 



the idea that they take a common view of their sub- 
ject. St. John's gospel is a later work, standing by 
itself, covering for the most part different ground 
from that of the others, and in a measure supple- 
menting them. 

Let us begin with the synoptics — Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke. There is a striking agreement among 
them, broken now and again by no less striking dif- 
ferences. 

A careful comparison between them leads to the 
conclusion that Mark was written earliest, and con- 
stituted the basis of both Matthew and Luke. Fre- 
quently these two gospels follow Mark word for 
word. When this is not the case, they still absorb 
so much between them that there are only two or 
three incidents in the second gospel that are not to 
be found either in the first or in the third, if not in 
both. 

We must therefore take Mark first. Fortunately, 
it is the gospel concerning which we have the most 
full and exact information. From Papias and 
Irenaeus, who lived in the middle and the latter half 
of the second century, we learn that Mark was a dis- 
ciple of Peter, who wrote down the contents of his 
master's preaching. 

Papias says that Mark was careful to be accurate 



The Nevj Testament 



65 



in his reports, but that he wrote " not in order/' It 
is difficult to determine exactly what this last phrase 
means. But as we have groups of incidents of a 
similar character in the gospel, it may be that they 
are not altogether arranged in chronological order. 

For example, Mark gives us right off a series of 
incidents in which the scribes and Pharisees take 
offence at the conduct of Jesus — His forgiving sin, 
His permitting His disciples to abandon the practice 
of fasting, His eating with publicans and sinners, 
His supposed Sabbath-breaking. It is hardly prob- 
able that all these things come sharply, one upon 
another, at one point in our Lord's life. It is much 
more likely that they are grouped together in order 
that by seeing them all at once we may the better 
understand why Jesus was rejected and persecuted. 

Because Mark's gospel is rather shorter than its 
companions, it has been hastily assumed that it is in 
part an abbreviation of them. This is a complete 
mistake, as a little careful comparison of the gospels 
in their narration of the same incident will make ap- 
parent. 

Mark is short simply because of his omissions. 
He gives no account of the birth and infancy of 
Jesus; he does not record lengthy discourses ; where 
the other evangelists have a string of parables, Mark 



66 



The Construction of the Bible 



contents himself with one or two specimens. His 
gospel is devoted to events in the life of Jesus, rather 
than to the teachings which take so large a place in 
the other gospels. But in narrating these events 
Mark is more full of detail and more richly colored 
than the other synoptics. 

We may go to this gospel, then, for the primitive 
accounts of the deeds of Jesus, and find them the 
most complete accounts. 

It is very satisfactory to find this to be the case 
with a work so highly authenticated as the second 
gospel. A concurrence of very ancient testimony 
points to it as the work of a companion of St. Peter, 
and as virtually that apostle's preaching. 

Can we go further back in our search for prim- 
itive sources? We have no occasion to do so in the 
case of the second gospel, reposing as it is on the 
testimony of a leading apostle. But there is much 
matter common to Matthew and Luke that is not 
found in Mark. Whence did it come ? That it is 
derived from a common source seems to be proved 
by the remarkable resemblances between these two 
gospels, especially in their reports of the sayings of 
Christ ; for it is improbable that either of them bor- 
rowed from the other. 

Their differences do not allow of such borrowing. 



The New Testament 



67 



For example, the two accounts of the infancy of 
Jesus, of the sermon on the mount, and of the resur- 
rection, are so different that we must suppose they 
were independent of one another. "It is not that 
these accounts do not admit of reconciliation. The 
need of some explanation before they can be recon- 
ciled is a proof that neither of them is dependent 
on the other. 

It has been suggested that there was a very prim- 
itive gospel, or perhaps not a full-dress gospel, but a 
collection of notes on the life of Christ, written out 
for the use of traveling evangelists, which contained 
those teachings of Christ that are common to Mat- 
thew and Luke. 

The existence of such a document might account 
for the perplexing fact that very early church- 
writers — Clement, of Rome, for example, who wrote 
an Epistle to the Corinthians about the year 90, and 
the author of The Teaching of the Tivelve Apostles, 
whose date is about the same time — give sayings of 
Jesus differently worded from similar utterances re- 
ported in our gospels. We have no evidence that 
any authoritative document of this nature was issued 
by the apostles. But we know that there were cer- 
tain early attempts to write the story of Jesus 
Christ; St. Luke tells us in the preface to his gospel 



68 



The Construction of the Bible 



that there had been many such before he wrote his 
own account. 

The suggestion that what is common to the gos- 
pels may be accounted for by the existence of a com- 
mon tradition will not meet the requirements of 
the case — the resemblances are too close. 

Here the writer Papias, to whom I have referred 
for his account of Mark, again comes to our aid. 
These are his words : " So, then, Matthew composed 
the oracles in the Hebrew languages, and each one 
interpreted them as he was able." 

You will notice two remarkable points in this 
statement of Papias concerning St. Matthew and his 
work. 

First, he calls it a collection of " Oracles " ; loyia 
is the Greek term, a word that was used for the ut- 
terances of heathen prophecy, as in the " Delphic 
Oracle." It would seem to indicate inspired, author- 
itative sayings. Now we find the closest agreement 
between the gospels in their reports of the sayings 
of Christ. It seems likely that care would be taken 
to treasure up these sayings in writing, even during 
the early period when the events of the life of J esus 
were still fresh in the memory of many, and could 
be trusted for a time to tradition. 

Still, it would appear that in this most primitive 



The Xew Testament 



69 



work of his, Matthew did not confine himself to re- 
cording detached oracular utterances. There must 
have been some connecting narrative, part of which 
was carried over to the other synoptic gospels. 

The second point of interest is the clear state- 
ment that Matthew wrote his book " in the Hebrew 
language." This is supported by the universal tes- 
timony of early church-writers. Several state dis- 
tinctly that Matthew wrote in Hebrew ; none say 
anything to the contrary. 

But our Matthew is in Greek;' and plainly it is 
not even a translation from a Hebrew original. Its 
style and many of its phrases show that it must have 
been composed originally in Greek. If, then, Papias 
and the other Fathers who refer to the subject are 
correct, Matthew must have composed some earlier 
work that has been lost, although it was used in the 
formation of our gospels. 

A curious fact here comes in to confirm the testi- 
mony of the Fathers. Some of the variations be- 
tween the synoptics can be explained on the hy- 
pothesis that the writers drew from a common 
source, found in a language which was not the same 
as that in which they were writing. 

For example, all three use different words for 
11 bed " in the incident of the paralytic who was let 



70 



The Construction of the Bible 



down through the roof of the house in which Jesus 
was teaching. There is no reason for the variations 
if a common Greek source had been followed. But 
if the evangelists were using a Hebrew document, it 
would be quite natural for them to render the word 
differently, according to taste or habit, seeing that 
two or three equivalent Greek words lay ready to 
hand. 

We start, then, with these two works described by 
Papias — Mark's Gospel and Matthew's Logia. Very 
possibly even Mark used the Logia as well as Peter's 
preaching, for where he quotes sayings of Jesus his 
language usually agrees more closely with that of 
the other synoptics than elsewhere. At all events, 
we can best account for the facts of the case by con- 
cluding that Matthew and Luke, at least, were both 
dependent on the Logia. We have already seen that 
they were also largely dependent on Mark. 

As regards Matthew, our first gospel, it is enough 
to point to these two sources to account for the 
greater part of its contents. Matthew is a combina- 
tion of Mark for the incidents, with the Logia for 
the teachings of Jesus. 

There is still a small residue of matter that cannot 
be disposed of in this way. The accounts of the 
birth of Jesus and of the resurrection could scarcely 



The New Testament 



71 



be in the Logia — they are given so differently in the 
two gospels of Matthew and Luke. There were 
other written records in existence, as we learn from 
Luke's prologue ; but possibly the opening and clos- 
ing scenes were put in from tradition. 

The word "tradition," however, seems out of 
place when we are dealing with writings so near to 
the events they record as our gospels. It would be 
more accurate to speak of personal testimony — per- 
haps even the first-hand testimony of living wit- 
nesses. The narratives of the Nativity may have 
come from Mary, the accounts of the Resurrection 
from the apostles or some of their contemporaries. 

Matthew's Hebrew Logia must have been com- 
posed for the benefit of Jewish Christians, or it 
would not have been written in the language of the 
Jews. The later work, our Matthew, though written 
in Greek, is more Jewish in form and references than 
the other synoptics. 

Thus instead of the expression u the kingdom of 
God," which we meet with everywhere else in the 
New Testament, we read in Matthew, and in Mat- 
thew alone, " the kingdom of heaven." The phrases 
mean exactly the same, but Matthew's is more Jew- 
ish in form, the Jews shrinking from a too familiar 
repetition of the word " God." This gospel also 



72 



The Construction of the Bible 



makes most frequent use of the Old Testament, ap- 
pealing to prophecy and pointing out the fulfilment 
of it in Jesus Christ. 

But to us it is of supreme value for its abundant 
reports of our Lord's teachings. While we have the 
events of the life of Jesus narrated in fullest detail 
in Mark, we have His teachings most copiously re- 
ported in Matthew. If, like Mary, we would sit at 
the feet of Jesus, let us read our Matthew. 

It is difficult to say whether Matthew or Luke 
was written first. But it does not much matter, see- 
ing that they were independent of one another. 
Both would seem to have been composed about the 
time of the fall of Jerusalem, probably Luke a little 
after that event. 

In his preface St. Luke tells us how he was led to 
undertake his work. Others had made earlier at- 
tempts, with results that our evangelist does not 
seem to have thought satisfactory — apparently writ- 
ing in an irresponsible way, and without seeing that 
they had good authority for what they said. This, 
we may infer — reading between the lines — from St. 
Luke's statement, after referring to the earlier ac- 
counts, that for his part he was collecting his materi- 
als from eye-witnesses, and tracing out the course of 
events " accurately from the first.'' 



The New Testament 



73 



That is a very important piece of information. 
We cannot doubt that the evangelist wrote in good 
faith. The old, vulgar charges of forgery have fallen 
to the ground, so plainly did they reveal an utter 
lack of capacity to appreciate the spirit in which 
the gospels were written. It cannot be questioned 
that St. Luke is truthful in his calm, deliberate 
statement concerning the authorities on which he re- 
lies, and the method of his work. Then we have 
his word for it that his gospel is composed of care- 
fully collected information which the writer has de- 
rived from those who were in personal contact with 
Jesus Christ. 

Now let us take up this gospel, and examine it 
side by side with its two companions. 

The first thing to strike a careful reader is its 
very attractive style. It is written in much better 
Greek than the other synoptics. 

Possibly " the beloved physician " was a man of 
higher education than the other evangelists. He 
seems to have been a native of Macedonia, and 
therefore Greek would be his own language. 

But the hymns which he gives in the earlier part 
of his work afford an exception to the style of the 
book, for they are the most Hebraistic writings in 
the New Testament, just in the form of the Old 



74 The Construction of the Bible 



Testament psalms. This remarkable difference in 
style is a clear proof that St. Luke did not com- 
pose the hymns himself or seriously alter them. 
This, then, is one of the signs of his great care to be 
accurate. 

When we make our way into the body of the 
work, we cannot but be struck with one feature of it 
that has often been observed. This is emphatically 
the gospel of grace. The depth of grace for the 
greatest sinner and the width of grace for all sorts 
of people are here revealed with a fulness and a 
clearness surpassing anj'thing elsewhere in the New 
Testament. 

Here especially Jesus is seen as "the Friend of 
publicans and sinners." The outcast woman, who 
washed His feet with her tears, Zacchseus the pub- 
lican, and the prodigal son, are found only in this 
gospel. So also the parable of the "Good 
Samaritan, ,, and other passages that agree with this 
parable in showing that the favor of Christ was not 
confined to Jews, belong exclusively to Luke. 

Another and a kindred feature of this gospel is its 
sympathy for the poor. If we compare the beati- 
tudes in Luke with the better known beatitudes in 
Matthew, this point will come out very distinctly. 
Matthew has "Blessed are the poor in spirit," 



The New Testament 



75 



" Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after 
righteousness," and so on, referring to persons of 
certain spiritual dispositions. Luke, on the other 
hand, has the beatitudes in a simpler and, as some 
think, a more primitive form — 44 Blessed are ye 
poor," 44 Blessed are ye that hunger more," and so 
on, followed by lamentations over the rich. 

These three characteristics of the gospel — its 
sympathy for sinners, its sympathy for foreigners, its 
sympathy for the poor — impart to it at once a ten- 
derness and a breadth that make it of peculiar value 
for evangelistic purposes. 

One more feature of the gospel may be noted 
here. As a rule St. Luke gives the sayings of 
Christ in direct connection with the occasions out of 
which they arose, while in Matthew they more often 
appear as parts of larger discourses. This is another 
indication of the accuracy Luke promised in his 
preface. It is a hint that when the same saying is 
given differently by two or three evangelists it may 
be wise to prefer Luke's version as the most exactly 
correct one — usually so, but not invariably. 

The Acts of the Apostles is a sort of second vol- 
ume added on to the third gospel. The prefaces of 
the two works are very similar ; they are dedicated 
to the same person, Theophilus, and the preface in 



76 



The Construction of the Bible 



the Acts refers to the gospel under the phrase, " the 
former treatise." Luke's characteristics are ap- 
parent again in this second work. 

It falls into two parts — the first half dealing with 
the early apostolic Church, and the second follow- 
ing the travels of St. Paul, of some portions of 
which the writer was an eye-witness. 

The work ends with the apostle's imprisonment at 
Rome. Why it ends there we cannot say. But if, 
some suppose, it was partly designed to conciliate 
the Roman Government, it may have gone as far as 
the author thought necessary to make out a good 
case for a favorable treatment of the Christians. 

It is to be noted that St. Luke always shows the 
Roman Government, and the centurions in par- 
ticular, in as favorable a light as possible. The hor- 
ror of Rome, which appears in the Apocalypse, 
sprang from Nero's persecution. Before that perse- 
cution broke out Rome had been the protector of 
the Christians from the rage and jealousy of the 
Jews. 

These three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
all precede the fourth gospel by a considerable in- 
terval. St. John lived till the reign of Trajan, and 
his gospel must have been written quite late in his 
life, toward the end of the first century. 



The Neiv Testament 



77 



The Revelation was written earlier. It stands at 
the end of our Bible, but it was not the last book to 
appear. 

You will scarcely expect me to attempt an ex- 
planation of this very extraordinary book, while 
taking a bird's-eye view of the formation of the New 
Testament. It may be enough to say here that what- 
ever else it contains, in one part it predicts the de- 
struction of Jerusalem, and in another the over- 
throw of the brutal power of Rome, now, after 
Nero's persecution, " Babylon drunk with the blood 
of the saints,'' while beyond all is the glorious 
triumph of Christ and His people. 

The gospel is entirely different in tone. A legend 
concerning the origin of it, preserved by Clement of 
Alexandria, well illustrates the character of this 
work. "But John," writes Clement, a last of all 
perceiving that what had reference to the body in 
the gospel of our Saviour was sufficiently detailed, 
and being encouraged by his familiar friends, and 
urged by the Spirit, wrote a spiritual gospel." 

This gospel comes last ; it is supplementary to the 
other gospels ; it is a spiritual gospel. But while 
spiritual in its deepest teachings, it is not the less a 
record of historical facts. Indeed, John is peculiarly 
precise in his accounts of events. He gives time 



78 



The Construction of the Bible 



and place, day and hour, the obscure locality, with 
an exactness of detail not to be found in the synop- 
tics. It is John, and John only, who mentions 
Bethany beyond Jordan, iEnon, and Sychar. His 
local coloring is very exact in all respects. Refer- 
ences to Jewish manners are such as to reveal inti- 
mate acquaintance with them. 

The gospel of John is by no means a shadowy, 
theological work ; it is steeped in facts, and it brings 
us close to the events it records in its vivid present- 
ment of them. The tendency of criticism early in 
the present century was to ignore this character of 
the gospel ; but attention to it brings it out so 
clearly that it cannot be neglected. This is one of 
the happy results of the more recent criticism. 

Another has been to show the essential agreement 
between the teachings of Jesus in John and His 
teachings in the synoptics. What is called the 
Johannine in that teaching belongs to its form 
rather than to its substance. 

One peculiarity of this gospel, however, must not 
be overlooked. Its style is unique, and the manner 
in which it sets out the teaching of Jesus is very 
different from the manner of the synoptics. There 
He speaks in picturesque parables and crisp prover- 
bial utterances. Here He appears in sharp contro- 



The New Testament 



79 



versy with the Jews or making long discourses to 
His own disciples. 

The difference of circumstances may to some ex- 
tent account for this difference of style. The synop- 
tics give us the teachings of Jesus addressed to the 
multitude from the boat by the seashore or on the 
mountain ; John does not report so much of this 
public preaching. He supplements it by adding dis- 
cussions with opponents, the private instruction of 
individual men and women, such as Nicodemus and 
the woman of Samaria, and the training of the 
twelve Apostles. 

Though we do not meet with full parables, we have 
a parabolic style in John, as when Jesus calls Him- 
self " the bread of life," " the door," 44 the good 
Shepherd." 

But in the matter of style John is uniform 
throughout, whether he is giving discourses of Jesus, 
or sayings of John the Baptist, or his own comments 
— in all cases the peculiar, unique, Johannine style. 
From this significant fact we can only draw one con- 
clusion. It must be the case that after long brood- 
ing over the story of his early days, the old man 
shaped it somewhat in the form of his own imagi- 
nation, reporting actual events, and dependable in 
his statements concerning them — for the memory of 



80 



The Construction of the Bible 



the aged is peculiarly tenacious of the experience of 
early days, and John shared in the promise of the 
Spirit, who was to bring all things to remembrance ; 
reporting also the actual teachings of Jesus, the 
very greatest teachings, the loftiest ideas of all re- 
ligion ; but yet casting all in the mould of his own 
style. 

" The letter killeth ; the Spirit giveth life." St. 
John, the spiritual evangelist, introduces us most in- 
timately to the heart and soul of the life and teach- 
ings of our Lord Jesus Christ. The book will al- 
ways be prized for this reason as the inner shrine of 
all Scripture. It is as his experience deepens that 
the exceeding preciousness of this book grows on 
the Christian, and he learns more and more to draw 
from it the sustenance of his better thoughts. 

St. John's three epistles go with the gospel ; simi- 
lar in style, of the same date, breathing the same 
spirit, they are like a threefold echo back from the 
heart of the apostle of the teachings of his Lord 
which he has recorded in his gospel. 

Ill 

All these books of the New' Testament were at 
first scattered works, distributed over various parts 



The New Testament 



81 



of the Roman Empire. People who possessed one 
or more of them might know nothing about the 
others. There is reason to think that for a consider- 
able time some of them were confined to small local 
groups of readers. Some were known only in the 
east, some only in the west. 

How did the books come to be put together, recog- 
nized as Scripture, and honored as constituting a 
44 New Testament " ? This is the last question we 
have now to consider. 

We have seen that most of . the epistles were 
written before the gospels. They were not the first, 
however, to form a nucleus of the New Testament. 
The process began with the gospels. The first 
volume of the New Testament consisted of the gos- 
pels, and originally, it would seem, only of the 
synoptics; for, though the gospel of John was cer- 
tainly written before the other gospels w r ere grouped 
together in one volume, probably the use of this sup- 
plementary gospel was confined for some time to the 
Christians of Ephesus and the neighborhood, disci- 
ples of St. John and their descendants, who formed 
a sort of Johannine school. 

We have seen that the earliest writer whose ac- 
count of the gospels has reached us is Papias, of the 
middle of the second century. Papias wrote an 



82 



The Construction of the Bible 



" Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord." We can- 
not be certain as to what materials he worked with ; 
but there is some reason for thinking that he used 
our gospels. 

The case becomes clearer when we arrive at Justin 
Martyr, who wrote about the year 150. In compos- 
ing a defence of Christianity for the Roman Senate, 
Justin says that the Christians in their assemblies 
used to read " the memoirs of the Apostles which 
are called gosples." He gives many extracts from 
these " memoirs," all of which can be traced to one 
or more of our three synoptics. From certain indi- 
rect but very significant allusions we can see that he 
also knew John. But he does not cite the fourth 
gospel as of the " memoirs." His many direct quo- 
tations are taken from the synoptics. 

What are we to conclude from this? Plainly that 
the synoptics were read in the Christian meetings. 
These three gospels constitute the first volume of 
the New Testament — they were the New Testament 
of the Christians of the middle of the second cen- 
tury. All our New Testament was then written ; 
much of it was nearly a hundred years old ; but as 
far as we can see it appears that, as yet, only these 
books had been put together for use in public wor- 
ship. 



The New Testament 



83 



Justin Martyr's disciple Tatian, an Assyrian, 
wrote a Harmony of the four gospels. The author 
of Supernatural Religion tried to maintain that 
Tatian's Harmony could not have been formed out 
of our gospels, because the fourth gospel was too 
late a work to have come into the scheme. But the 
recent discovery of the Harmony has made it cer- 
tain that it was formed from a combination of our 
gospels. This Harmony of Tatian's was long used 
in public worship by the Christians of Edessa, and 
elsewhere in the valley of the Euphrates. It may 
be read now in an English translation. 

When we pursue the question how the various 
books of our New Testament were put together in 
one volume and lifted to a place of honor, even 
above the Old Testament, here is the answer. It 
was the use of the books in public worship that led 
to the fixing of the Canon among the Christians, 
just as centuries earlier it had been the use of the 
books of the Old Testament in the synagogue that 
had determined the Canon of the Jewish scriptures. 

This was not done arbitrarily. Beside our four 
gospels there were spurious gospels and apocryphal 
gospels, and there was one gospel in particular that 
was much honored, being read in the churches of 
Jewish Christians, viz, the Gospel according to the 



84 



The Construction of the Bible 



Hebrews. The main body of the Church declined to 
admit these books for public worship. The decision 
was not made by any council or other Church author- 
ity — not till centuries later, when the communities 
of Christians had already settled independently 
what books should receive the honor of a place in 
the services of the Church. This is a happy illus- 
tration of the working of the Spirit of God in the 
hearts of the men and women who lived in the free 
churches of which primitive Christendom consisted. 

In the same way before long a second volume was 
added consisting of St. Paul's epistles. There were 
then two volumes known respectively as "The 
Gospel " — our four gospels, and " The Apostle " — 
St. Paul's epistles. A third volume followed con- 
sisting of the remainder of the New Testament. 
Sometimes the second and third parts were taken 
together. 

All this was accomplished with the greater part of 
the New Testament, before the year 180; for we 
find Irenseus at Lyons, quoting from the epistles as 
well as the gospels frequently, and taking them as 
standards of authority. 2 Peter was later in obtain- 
ing recognition. But by the time of Irenseus the 
bulk of the New Testament was received as au- 
thoritative. 



The Ntio Testament 



85 



It was a gradual growth ; and for some time there 
was some hesitation about books on the margin. 
The Shepherd of Hermes, Clement of Rome's Epistle, 
and the so-called Epistle of Barnabas are actually- 
found in some of the very oldest MSS. of the New 
Testament, written at the end. But they did not 
obtain universal recognition, and before long they 
were dropped. 

That this was wisely done cannot now be doubted. 
One of the best proofs of the inspiration of the New 
Testament comes from a comparison between its 
contents and the best writings of the early Fathers. 
We cannot but note a feebleness, a puerility, a dif- 
fuseness, a lack of originality in the writings of the 
sub-apostolic age in remarkable contrast to the 
spiritual and intellectual wealth and power of the 
New Testament books. We have in these books 
" the survival of the fittest," and the test they have 
survived is that of Christian experience. 

Two facts go a long way to account for this 
uniqueness of the New Testament. 

One is that in the gospels we have fresh tran- 
scripts from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. 
All other statements about Him are of doubtful 
origin. Here we are at the fountain head of 14 the 
truth as it is in Jesus." 



86 



The Construction of the Bible 



The second fact is that nearly all the New Testa- 
ment was written by Apostles and men under the 
immediate influence of the apostles — 44 apostolical 
men " they were called. That wonderful Spirit who 
breathes like the wind, coming we know not how, is 
here, and the inspiration of His presence is felt in 
the New Testament even more than in the Old 
Testament, while He sheds on the whole Bible a 
44 light that never shone on sea or shore." 



THE END 



PSALM-MOSAICS 

A BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL 
COMMENTARY ON THE PSALMS 

By Rev. A. SAUNDERS DYER, M.A. 

589 Pages. 8vo, Cloth. Price $2.50 



" Let no one be misled by the title of this book into fancying it a 
work of dry or abstruse theological reading. On the contrary, it is a 
very lively and extensive collection of matter illustrative of the Psalms, 
both prose and verse being employed. It is a sort of commonplace 
book on the Psalter, evidently the work of considerable time and exten- 
sive reading, and arranged with sufficient orderliness and method to 
avoid the appearance of desultoriness. It is a book to lie on one's 
table, to be taken up with the study of each Psalm, and one peculiarly 
rich in suggestive matter. For instance, on the one hundred and thirty- 
sixth Psalm there is given the striking story of its use by St. Athanasius 
on the night w T hen his enemies attacked the cathedral in Alexandria, and 
with each Psalm is usually given some historic association. A good 
index will aid the reader in keeping track of this widespread miscellany." 

— The Churchman. 

44 This is a good book, furnishing much fresh historical matter illus- 
trative of the influence of the Psalms in literature and biography, and it 
will be very useful to all Christians and especially to expounders of the 
Word." — JV. Y. Observer, 

44 A magnificent collection of biographical and historical illustrations 
of the Psalms gathered as a devotional help to th * reader in the religious 
life. It is a commentary of unique interest in its wealth of fresh and 
helpful material." — The Parish Visitor, 

44 Rev. A. S. Dyer has prepared a unique and quite interesting book 
for Biblical scholars. It may be described tersely as a collection of 
biographical, historical and miscellaneous illustrations of the Psalms 
gathered from many sources and classified in the order of the Psalms to 
which they relate. It is a book of material which Christians may use to 
advantage. It is not in any sense a connected narrative, but a collection 
of diversified incidents and suggestions of considerable illustrative value, 
and ordinarily of even greater devotional helpfulness." 

— The Congregationalist, 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher 
2 and 3 Bible House NEW YORK 



The Master's Guide 

for His Disciples 

Being a manual of all the recorded sayings of Jesus, ar- 
ranged for easy consultation and systematic reading, 
with a preface by Eugene Stock, author of " Lessons 
on the Life of our Lord." 

" The little book embodies a very happy thought in a very happy 
form. The thought was to ascertain what our Lord Jesus Christ actually 
said on various topics, doctrinal, spiritual, and practical, and so to 
present the result of the inquiry as to give real assistance to those who 
desire to know and obey their Master's words. The form adopted is to 
take every one of the recorded sayings of Christ and group them together 
without comment under various headings, so that no part of His teach- 
ings shall be missed. I am sure that every reader will be grateful to the 
compiler for thus arranging for him the words of Him who spake as 
never man spake." — Eugene Stock. 

" It was a happy inspiration that moved the preparation of 
this little volume, which arranges, in a following of the Revised 
Version, all of our Blessed Lord's teachings, topically, in the 
several departments of the whole Christian life and truth. The 
work falls naturally and easily into three main divisions; namely, 
the Devout Life, which groups in a suggestive way all sayings 
of the Master touching Christian worship, the Christian spirit, 
and the Christian virtues; the Practical Life, which includes 
every teaching of Jesus that is concerned with Christian conduct 
and the Christian relations ; the Intellectual Life, comprehensive 
of all essential Christian truth which He unfolded ; that is to 
say, the spiritual doctrines that were given by Christ to His dis- 
ciples. All these recorded utterances of the word which came 
down from heaven, when looked at aside from their earthly sur- 
roundings, quite detached from their context and classed to- 
gether according to their subjects, present a very striking study. 
The narrow-formed volume is beautifully printed and bound, a 
credit to the publisher, and would be found an uncommonly neat 
and acceptable little gift." — Living Church, 

TO BE HAP IN THE FOLLOWING STYLES: 

1. Dark cloth, red top to leaves. Price, $1.00. 

2. White cloth, full gilt edges (in box). Price, $1.25. 

3. Persian seal, limp, round corners, gilt edges (in box). 

Price, $2.00. 

*** Copies sent by mail, post-paid, upon receipt of price. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher 
2 and 3 Bible House - - New York 



CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND 

By Frederic W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., Archdeacon and 
Canon of Westminster. Profusely illustrated, i2mo, 
cloth extra. Price, $1.50. 

11 This is an attractive, popular volume on the seven most interesting 
* English Cathedrals.' The author describes the architecture with poetic 
appreciation, and dwells as he does so on the faith of the builders and 
the noble history of the English people and the English Church. The 
volume is copiously illustrated with spirited woodcuts." — The Independent. 

"It has been said the best supplement to a liberal education would 
be a long tour among the Cathedrals of England, studying their mag- 
nificent architecture, the symbolism of their splendid windows, and 
everything else about these massive structures, which in their silent 
grandeur teach history and poetry, science and religion, worship and 
devotion, in lessons of enduring stone. Most of us, however, cannot 
thus supplement our college days ; so we shall do well to obtain this 
beautiful book, which, with its many graphic pictures, matched by the 
graceful text by skilled writers, will tell us more than nine tourists out of 
ten will remember for many a day spent under the shadow of these 
magnificent towers." — The Golden Rule. 

STORIES OF THE CATHEDRAL CITIES OF ENGLAND 

By Emma Marshall. i2mo, cloth, illustrated. Price, $1.25 

These stories are gathered from reliable sources in the hope of 
awakening a lively interest on the historical memories in these great 
relics of times gone by. While intensely interesting, they avoid mere 
dissertations on architecture or minute descriptions of the buildings 
themselves. 

ENGLISH CATHEDRALS: 

Their Architecture, Symbolism and History. Compiled by 
E. W. Boyd, Head of St. Agnes School, Albany. 
Fourth Edition. Revised. i6mo, cloth extra. Price, 
60 cents ; also, in white and gold, 75 cents. 

An extremely useful short account of the history, styles and traditions 
of the English Cathedrals ; together with an illustrated glossary, giving 
the definition and symbolism of the various parts. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER 

PUBLISHER 

2 and 3 Bible House, - - - NEW YORK 



Christianity Between Sundays 

By Rev. GEO. HODGES, D.D. 

Rector of Calvary Church, Pittsburgh ., 

267 pages, i2mo 9 neat cloth binding. Price $i.oo 
CONTENTS: 

The Credentials of Christianity — Business on Christian Principles — The 
D17 Brook — The Beginning of the Millenium — The Holiness of 
Holidays — Money for Man — What a Blind Man Saw — The Brethren 
and the Brotherhood — The Simplicity of Religion — Four Ways of 
Loving God — The Interview with Nicodemus — Religion on Business 
Principles — The Border of His Garment — The Great Commandment 
— Peter and Judas— Serving God for Naught — Two Stumbling-stones 
—Why We Ought to Love God— The Sick of the Palsy— The 
Consolation of Religion — The Proving of Philip. 



"Dr. Hodges believes that Christianity means the bettering of 
common life ; that it has just as much to do with business as it has with 
religion, and six times as much to do with week-days as with Sundays. 
There are 21 sermons in this collection, so many eloquent proofs that the 
author's religion is not a thing kept apart for Sundays, but taken up 
every morning with a sense of consecration to his Master's business. " — 
Public Ledger. 

" It is piquant and fresh. The sentences are clear, short, and striking, 
and are turned off with such grace and ease that the reader is captivated. 
And in point of manner the sermons are admirable." — The Golden Rule, 

" The English habit of reading borrowed sermons has not found favor 
in America ; but, if some thousands of ministers would, without any 
concealment or deceit, read these sermons to their congregations, it 
would be greatly for the benefit of as many congregations. But it would 
be still better if these sermons should inspire a good many preachers to 
follow the example of their author in the method of their work." — The 
Christian Register. 

"This is a spicy and irresistibly readable book of short essays that 
have a moral purpose and are full of pertinent illustrations." — Boston 
Herald. 

"These are no monk's homilies, and have no trace of cloister atmos- 
phere or smell from lamp or gas fixtures. They are suggested by the 
needs of the actual men who live in Pittsburgh and elsewhere." — The 
Critic. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher 
2 and 3 Bible House, NEW YORK 



